Kings didn’t play their best, which spells trouble for the Rangers

Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist can not stop this shot by Kings Drew Doughty in the 2nd period. The Los Angeles Kings faced the New York Rangers in game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Los Angeles, CA. 6/4/2014(Photo by John McCoy / Los Angeles Daily News)

So when New York Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said Thursday the Kings were one of the best teams he’s seen in a long time, rest assured he wasn’t blowing smoke.

“Areas to exploit, they don’t jump out at you,” Vigneault sighed.

And that’s only part of the problem for Vigneault and his Rangers.

It’s one thing rising up to beat the Kings at their best — a tall order indeed for the Eastern Conference champions.

It’s something else entirely when you can’t even deal with them at considerably less than peak performance — a reality that slapped the Rangers in the face in a 3-2 overtime loss in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Wednesday night.

The Kings played a level or two below a facsimile of themselves for most of Game 1, and there wasn’t one person at Staples Center who would argue otherwise.

Yet it was still enough to snatch immediate control of this best-of-7 series.

“We’re not happy with the start, but we’re happy we showed the confidence to come back and win the game still,” defenseman Drew Doughty said.

And in the process, claim a decisive victory in the game within the mental game of such a high-stakes series.

While the Rangers slumped somberly into a two-day break between Games 1 and 2 knowing they couldn’t handle a watered-down version of the Kings, the Kings bounced into it knowing their margin of error is a bit wider than originally thought.

They know they can play better.

“We didn’t do a lot of things right,” Doughty conceded.

But they also know they can still get by even at less than their best — especially with a goalie as special as Jonathan Quick buying them the necessary time to get their act together.

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And while the Rangers said all the right things Thursday and declared focus on all the proper areas, in the back of their heads they understand the task of beating the Kings is probably more daunting than even they imagined.

“One of the things that’s evident to me, and it should be to our whole group, is we’re not going to beat this team if we do not all bring our ‘A’ game,” Vigneault said. “It is that strong of an opponent that we are playing against.”

And even that might not be enough to get it done.

The Kings, on the other hand, have room for error.

To a man, they understand they produced an effort that fell far short of acceptable Wednesday,

“Certainly not our best game by any standards, especially ours,” Williams said.

Yet they still won.

Talk about a confidence boost.

The fear is a double-edged sword is developing for the Kings, whose sheer talent is outshined only by their remarkable ability to vault themselves to an even higher level of play when necessary.

Standing just three steps from their second Stanley Cup championship in three seasons, the last thing they need is a false sense of security.

A similar effort could be their undoing, and their penchant for plopping themselves into dangerous positions, only to mastermind thrilling escapes, might backfire.

“We certainly don’t want to be making a habit of this,” Williams said.

Even though they’ve done just that while requiring three straight Game 7 victories to reach the Stanley Cup Final — and in the process created an almost impenetrable belief in themselves.

You figure that double-edged sword would have slashed them by now, right?

But it hasn’t, and chances are it probably won’t.

If anything, they solidified that belief with their win over the Rangers in Game 1.